Even Jonathan momentarily searches for the shooter, until he spots Mama Low, sweating under his topee, pointing a smoking starter's pistol at the night sky.
The crabs are off.
* * *
Then, casually, it was happening.
No formality, no epiphany, no commotion, no screams ― scarcely a sound beyond Roper's curt order to Frisky and Tabby to "stand still and do nothing, now."
If anything was remarkable at all, it was not the noise but the quiet. Mama Low abandoned his harangue, the band stopped playing fanfares and the polo players gave up their frenzied cheers.
And this quiet developed slowly, in the same way that a large orchestra fizzles out at rehearsal, with the most determined players, or the most oblivious, going on for several bars before they too dwindle to a halt. Then for a while all Jonathan noticed were the things you suddenly hear on Hunter's Island when people stop making such a din: bird cries, cicadas, the bubbling of the coral water off Penguin Point, the bray of a wild pony from the cemetery and a couple of tinny wallops of a hammer as some late toiler down in Deep Bay negotiates with his outboard. Then he heard nothing at all, and the quiet became vast and terrible, and Jonathan with his grandstand view from the balcony picked out the two broad-armed professionals who had left the restaurant earlier in the evening and ridden away in their new white Cigarette but were now edging along the lines of the spectators like sidesmen in church, taking their collection of pocketbooks, wallets, purses and wristwatches and little wads of cash from people's back pockets.
And jewellery, Jed's particularly. Jonathan was just in time to see her bare arms lift first to her left ear, then to her right, pushing aside her hair and bowing slightly. Then to her throat to remove her necklace, just as if she were about to climb into someone's bed. Nobody is mad enough to wear jewellery in the Bahamas anymore, Burr had said: unless they happen to be Dicky Roper's girl.
And still no fuss. Everyone understanding the rules. No objectors, no resistance or unpleasantness at all ― for the good reason that while one of the thieves was tendering an open plastic briefcase to receive the congregation's offerings, his accomplice was wheeling the beat-up perambulator with the rum and whiskey bottles on it, and the cans of beer in their ice tub. And among the beer and the bottles sat eight-year-old Daniel Roper like a sacrificial Buddha, with an automatic pistol at his head, enduring the first of the five minutes that Burr had said wouldn't matter to a boy his age ― and perhaps Burr was right at that, for Daniel was smiling, and sharing the good joke with the crowd, grateful for relief from the scary crab race.
But Jonathan didn't share Daniel's joke. Instead, he saw a flickering of light from somewhere inside his eyes, like a red splash of fury. And he heard a call to battle stronger than any he could remember since the night he had emptied his Heckler at the unarmed green Irishman, so loud that he wasn't thinking anymore, he was only doing. For days and nights ― now in the conscious part of his brain, now the unconscious ― he had been steeling himself for this moment, relishing it, fearing it, planning it: if they do this, the logical response will be that; if they are here, the place to be is there. But he had not reckoned with his feelings. Until now. Which no doubt was why his first response was not the one that he had planned.
Having stepped as far back into the shadows as the balcony allowed, he slipped off his white chef's hat and tunic, then ran into the kitchen in his shorts, heading for the cash desk, where Miss Amelia sat working on her fingernails. He grabbed her telephone, held the receiver to his ear and rattled the cradle long enough to establish what he already knew, namely that the line was cut. He picked up a dishcloth and, jumping on the central table, removed the neon strip that lighted the kitchen. Meanwhile he ordered Miss Amelia to leave the cash desk exactly as it was and hide herself upstairs, no belly-aching, no trying to take the money or they would come after her. By the glow of the arc lights outside, he then hastened to the work surface where he kept his knife block, selected the most rigid of his carving knives, and ran with it, not back to the balcony but through the scullery to the service door on the south side.
Why the knife? he wondered as he ran. Why the knife? Who am I going to slice up with a knife? But he didn't throw it away. He was glad he had the knife, because a man with a weapon, any weapon, is twice the man he is without one: read the manual.
Once outdoors he kept running southward, ducking and leaping between the century cacti and the sea-grape trees until he gained the brow of cliff that overlooked Goose Neck. There, panting and sweating, he saw what he was looking for: the white motorboat, moored on the eastern side of the inlet for the men's escape. But he didn't pause to admire the sight. Knife in hand, he ran back to the darkened kitchen. And though the whole exercise had not taken him above a minute, it had been quite long enough for Miss Amelia to make herself scarce upstairs.
From the unlit kitchen window on the north side, Jonathan took stock of the thieves' progress, and blessedly in that time he was able to harness some of his first, murderous anger, for his focus improved and his breathing settled and self-discipline, more or less, was once more his. But where did his anger come from? From somewhere dark and far back in him. It rose and spread over him in a flood, yet its origin was a mystery. And he held on to the knife. Thumb on top, Johnny, same as buttering bread... weave the blade and watch his eyes... not too low now, and bother him a little bit with your other hand...
Major Corkoran in his Panama hat had found a chair and was sitting astride it, arms folded along the backrest and chin propped on his arms, watching the thieves as if they were a fashion show. Lord Langbourne had surrendered his camera, but the man with the briefcase no sooner had it than he threw it irritably aside as unacceptable. Jonathan heard a drawled "Oh, fuck you." Frisky and Tabby stood like men possessed, rigidly at the alert not five yards from their quarries. But Roper's right arm was still held out to them in prohibition, while his eyes remained fixed on Daniel and the thieves.
As to Jed, she was standing alone without her jewellery at the edge of the dance floor, her body made jagged by the tension, her hands spread on her thighs, as if to stop herself from running to Daniel.
"If it's money you want, you can have it," Jonathan heard Roper say, calmly. "Want a hundred thousand dollars? Have it in cash, got it on the boat, just give me the boy. Shan't send the police after you. Leave you completely alone. Long as I've got the boy. Do you understand what I'm saying? Speak English? Corky, try 'em in Spanish, will you?"
Then Corkoran's voice, obediently passing on the same message in decent Spanish.
Jonathan glanced at the cash desk. Miss Amelia's till stood open. Half-counted piles of money lay strewn across the counter. He stared down the zigzag path that led from the dance floor to the kitchen. It was steep and crudely paved. Only a lunatic would try to push a loaded perambulator up it. It was also floodlit, which meant that anyone stepping into the darkened kitchen would be unsighted. Jonathan slipped the carving knife under his waistband and wiped his sweated palm on the seat of his shorts.